Written by a leading scholar of juvenile justice, this book examines the social and legal changes that have transformed the juvenile court in the last three decades from a nominally rehabilitative welfare agency into a scaled-down criminal court for young offenders. It explores the complex relationship between race and youth crime to explain both the Supreme Court decisions to provide delinquents with procedural justice and the more recent political impetus to "get tough" on young offenders. This provocative book will be necessary reading for criminal and juvenile justice scholars,...

This book provides an overview of the dominant philosophical approaches and practices in handling status offenders--those children who habitually resist the control of their parents and schools, who run away from home, who drink and stay out after curfew. The three basic and competing social philosophies in responding to these troubled and troublesome youths--discussed at length in this book--are known as the treatment, deterrence, and normalization rationales. In examining these philosophies, the authors consider the quality and quantity of response to and for status offenders at local...

The Habits of Legality provides a broad survey of American criminal justice in a time of troubles. It asks the central questions: In what degree are the justice system's functions guided by ascertainable legal norms? How accountable are public officials who wield the rigorous sanctions of the penal law? Where the habits of legality are weak, how can they be invigorated?

A number of factors combine to constrict the rule of law in the criminal process. A crime epidemic of alarming proportions places enormous burdens on the system and gives rise to a "war on crime" that often...

Police departments across the country are busily "reinventing" themselves, adopting a new style known as "community policing." This approach to policing involves organizational decentralization, new channels of communication with the public, a commitment to responding to what the community thinks their priorities ought to be, and the adoption of a broad problem-solving approach to neighborhood issues. Police departments that succeed in adopting this new stance have an entirely different relationship to the public that they serve. Chicago made the transition, embarking on what is now the...

In the early 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to concerted advocacy-group lobbying, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of "hate crime" laws requiring the collection of statistics on, and enhancing the punishment for, crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places the evolution of the hate crime concept in socio-legal perspective. James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter adopt a skeptical if not critical stance, maintaining that legal definitions of hate crime are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. No matter how hate...

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was arguably the most important legislative achievement of President Clinton's first term. In this detailed account, Lord Windlesham, a prominent legal scholar, British legislator, and Oxford College Principal, brings his experience to bear in analyzing the forces inside and outside the 103rd Congress, which shaped the final content of the Act. Controversial issues discussed include racial justice, "three strikes and you're out" and mandatory sentencing, the Brady Act and the assault weapons ban, the competing claims of prison building...

In the past decade, alarming reports of youth violence have appeared with increasing frequency in the news media. Legislators across the United States have responded to this sense of national emergency by changing many of the laws designed to cope with juvenile offenders. But are we really in the midst of a surge in youth violence? More to the point, what causes youth violence and what should we do about it? Franklin Zimring offers the definitive examination of adolescent violence in the United States both as a social phenomenon and a policy problem. This book covers the range of youth...

This collection of original essays surveys the evolution of sentencing policies and practices in Western countries over the past twenty-five years. Contributors address plea-bargaining, community service, electronic monitoring, standards of use of incarceration, and legal perspectives on sentencing policy developments, among other topics. Sentencing and Sanctions in Western Countries provides a range of scholars and students excellent cross-national knowledge of sentencing laws and practices, when and why they have changed over time, and with what effects.

Although criminal justice systems vary greatly around the world, one theme has emerged in all western jurisdictions in recent years: a rise in both the rhetoric and practice of severe punishment at a time when public opinion has played a pivotal role in sentencing policy and reforms. Despite the differences among jurisdictions, startling commonalities exist among the five countries-the U.K., USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand--surveyed here. Drawing on the results of representative opinion surveys and other research tools the authors map public attitudes towards crime and punishment...

Braithwaite's argument against punitive justice systems and for restorative justice systems establishes that there are good theoretical and empirical grounds for anticipating that well designed restorative justice processes will restore victims, offenders, and communities better than existing criminal justice practices. Counterintuitively, he also shows that a restorative justice system may deter, incapacitate, and rehabilitate more effectively than a punitive system. This is particularly true when the restorative justice system is embedded in a responsive regulatory framework that opts for...